5 Years
In March, I was driving very slowly downtown with a new friend. I was driving slowly through the traffic stretching out in front of me. I had a new friend in the car with me and we didn’t know each other very well yet as we were still going on outings as new friends do. As I was creeping along, I spotted a restaurant in big, white, block letters, with the name, “LUKE’S”. The name was so blindingly white, I became overwhelmed with feeling and a hypnotic pull of continually scanning my eyes over each individual letter; I couldn’t tear my eyes away, causing me to lightly tap the car in front of me.
Immediately, I was brought back to the present. I pulled over with the other driver but the driver was completely fine about the incident since there was no mark and thanked me for pulling over. When I got back in my car, with my new friend sitting in the passenger side, I couldn’t form a sentence about why I was so distracted. From an outside perspective, there were no distractions so how could I hit that car?
How do you casually say to a friend in the making, “Yeah, sorry about that, I saw my dead best friend’s name and I couldn’t stop looking at it?” So instead, I quickly apologized and moved on.
The truth is, he is not on my mind as often. And when I am least expecting it, a reminder slaps me hard across the face. A reminder I am alive and he is not. A reminder screaming at me, shouting at me, “you’re going to forget me? Just like that? I’m gone and you get to carry on. You don’t have the right to forget me.” This is my mind’s internal dialogue on his behalf that is painfully appropriate.
It took tapping the car in front of me to remind me how we once were the car that was not just tapped but smashed from behind. And for a moment, I switched places with the driver who killed my best friend.
I think about Luke the most at the beginning and the end of each year. But truthfully, I haven’t been thinking about him as much. I am guilty and ashamed of this fact. How could I not think about someone who I love as much as I love him?
I’ll see little reminders, restaurant signs, men with his hair, or a stranger wearing a familiar-looking flannel. A song will come on in the grocery store that he loved so much and a flashback takes me to a moment he turned up the volume in the car because he wanted it louder. He is everywhere I go. But he is also nowhere unless I acknowledge the signs unless I give into the moment. Acknowledge his presence.
People have asked me why even after five years have gone by, why I post such a dark, sad, piece about his death on social media. My response to those who ask, I say, it would be the same if he was alive; I would be posting if he was here today: his birthday, celebrations, holidays together. Nothing has changed except he is not here anymore. Which means everything changed and still is changing. The past is reordering itself. He deserves to be remembered.
My heart hurts but I’m not lonely. Not anymore. My skin crawls, I am withdrawn until finally, the month drags on until I am met with March twenty-fifth.
Yet, it has been quite satisfactory to hear people all around me exclaim how much they hate March now. Our reasons are drastically different but it feels like now everyone understands how I hurt. How angry I still am. How I long for March to just be fucking over. There is something almost perfect about sharing this feeling with hundreds of thousands of other people — finally. When I come across strangers who tell me they hate March because of the world stopping one year ago, I nod in agreement.
But I nod because my world stopped five years ago. My world froze, paused, shook, died, and now is ever slowly growing back.
It is the best feeling in the entire world to know people hate March just as much as I do. I don’t even care that our reasons are different, it is enough to share the hatred. A collective hate. And I’m ok with that.
I don’t talk about my path of healing because why would I? He paid the ultimate price. I can deal with a few broken bones. A broken heart.
I’m not going to lie to make someone else have no discomfort. I am uncomfortable every day. When someone new sees the “L” on my ribs and asks what the letter represents — the side where I broke my ribs in the accident — I always pause. I thought I would lie to those who are unfamiliar. I imagined I would say the “L” stands for “Love” or my middle name, “Luella.” But I tell the truth; I quietly announce, “my best friend died,” and usually people nod. Then move the conversation along.
Most recently when I told someone who asked about the tattoo, they looked impressed. I wanted to cry but held back. This was someone who didn’t deserve to know me or Luke but it felt like a strange compliment to have them be impressed.
Sometimes when I feel desperate, I daydream about how much I would give up if I could have a moment with Luke. I start with objects I own and work my way down to experiences I have had and then physical pieces of my body I would relinquish. Not even talk to him but just see him. To have him stand in front of me, to reach out and touch him. I start with objects I could live without then onto giving up every experience I’ve had since he died. I struggle with the thought of exchanging my cat for a singular moment with Luke — even though it is fictional and fantastical — but I always end up choosing a moment with Luke over my cat. Ultimately, at the end of this daydream, I start to bargain with myself, wondering how many body pieces I would abandon to have him. My left leg, my right ear, both my index fingers.
This is how extreme I would go to have one single moment with him. To see him as I knew him.
It’s been five years; half a decade and an everlastingness to go. I’ve been told at the five-year mark, it will become easier. I’ve scorned those who nonchalantly tell me this statement as though it is fact. I believe that statement to mean it does not get easier emotionally but only easier on our memory. It is easier on our memory because we are forgetting them.
I once had a dream shortly after he died after I was able to go back home after rehabilitation. It happened after one of my first nights in my own bed. The dream is a memory that doesn’t exist. I dreamt someone came to knock on the doorbell; I ran up the stairs absolutely shocked to see his blurry image on the other side of the door. I swung the door open, asking him a fury of questions all without letting him answer before asking the next.
I asked him, “you’re back? Where did you go? Where have you been? Why are you here? We have to tell your parents you’re back!”
And he just smiled the quiet smile he would sometimes give me without answering any of my questions.
I cried hard that morning and that was the last time I dreamt about him. That must’ve been his goodbye.
Five years later and of all the memories I could hold onto, my body does not let go of this dream. This is my body’s last true memory of him. Five years later and it is not easier. Five years later and an everlastingness to go.
